The DACH Conference 2007 September 1014, 2007 in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

D for Germany, A for Austria and CH for Switzerland - these letters otherwise known from zip codes or car stickers have been combined to create the acronym DACH which has become a major event for German-speaking meteorologists all over the world. At the onset of the new millennium, the meteorological societies of the three countries have merged their conferences and started the tradition of a joint symposium which takes place in varying cities every three years. Subsequent to DACH 2001 in Vienna, Austria and DACH 2004 in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2007 the Hamburg branch of the German Meteorological Society was in charge of the preparation and realization of the DACH Conference. The conference was very well received in the atmospheric sciences community: As many as 540 researchers from wide-ranging areas of meteorology as well as physical oceanography gathered in Hamburg for a vivid exchange of their latest scientif c results between September 10 and 14, 2007. Besides participants from the three founding countries of DACH, who constituted the vast majority owing to the German conference language, twelve further nations were represented by smaller numbers of participating scientists. 75 % of the participants were actively involved in the presentations, which resulted in the impressive number of 238 oral presentations and 167 posters. Accordingly, four parallel sessions instead of previously three were held at DACH 2007. At the conference venue, an exhibition of various meteorological services, instruments, and other products of interest for the atmospheric sciences community was hosted. Due to the high relevance of weather and climate for society and economy, DACH 2007 was met with a great response from the public as well as from all different types of media. There was abundant opportunity for the participants to present their research to the attending representatives of the press, of radio and of television stations. Table 1 gives an overview of the 20 sessions held at DACH 2007 including the oral as well as the poster presentations. Since these presentations yielded a fascinating cross-section of the current expertise in atmospheric sciences throughout the three DACH countries, the editors of Meteorologische Zeitschrift decided to dedicate a special issue to DACH 2007. This allows the international meteorological community beyond the borders of the German speaking countries to share some of the most interesting results presented at the conference. Since the number of interesting contributions at DACH 2007 exceeded the scope of a single issue of Meteorologische Zeitschrift by a multiple, the conference chairs of the respective sessions were asked to bring suggestions before the editors as to which presentations they considered most suitable for publication in the form of a scientif c article. Among the authors who accepted the offer to submit a manuscript for the DACH 2007 special issues, eight articles from a broad variety of meteorological research areas passed the review process. The effort of the reviewers who ensured the high scientif c quality of this special issue is highly appreciated. The peer-reviewed articles featured in this special issue therefore give a good overview of some of the highlights of DACH 2007. These publications do not only cover various geographical regions from the polar regions, to the mid-latitudes, to the tropics. They are equally wide-ranging insofar as different methodologies for advancing atmospheric sciences are concerned, such as the application of remote sensing techniques for studying cloud microphysics, the development and use of storm indices, and the observation and understanding of the links between aerosol transport and large scale processes.